None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II

by Anthony A. Goodman

  “Oh, God, Onkle Meyer, what have they done to you?” he said in German.

  Berg did not answer, but only stared back at his nephew. “So you are a soldier now, my boy.” Then his eyes went to Schneider’s medical insignias. “A Doktor and a soldier….”

  Schneider shook his head. “No, Onkel, not really a soldier. It’s just a uniform to me. I’m a surgeon, though. That I really am.”

  Berg looked so frail and so tired. Schneider took both of his uncle’s hands and lifted him to his feet. He supported the old man under his arms and walked him to the cot in the corner of the room. He pulled back the clean, new army blanket, which he realized had been left there by Green’s men, and arranged the pillow with its clean case. Then he eased Berg into the bed and pulled the cover to his chin.

  “Rest now, Uncle Meyer? And what happened to your forehead?”

  “Oh, that. A German officer thought he might like to see me dead. And he would have except that a moment before he would have pulled the trigger, the Americans came. When the shooting started, the Colonel ran away like a rabbit. I don’t know what happened to him

  Schneider nodded. He patted his uncle’s shoulder and said, “Rest now. I’ll get you some food, and then we’ll talk. We have all the time in the world. I am here for you now, finally.”

  Berg closed his eyes and, in seconds, was asleep.

  Over the next several days, almost nobody in the rapidly growing medical group slept at all. While operating during a raging battle carried with it an inarguable urgency, taking care of those wretched souls should have been a more leisurely and orderly process. But, it was not.

  Everyone worked day and night in a desperate attempt to keep alive those camp inmates who had survived their terrible ordeal. The success rate was pitifully low, however, and hundreds more died every day despite the doctors’ best efforts. It was nothing like working on the healthy GIs they had treated in battle. Nothing in the world could have prepared them for what they found in the camps, and nothing would stop them from using everything in their power to stop the dying. They requisitioned, they borrowed, and, mostly, they stole the supplies they needed.

  Schneider and Hamm set up a clinic in one of the newly sanitized empty barracks. It was good therapy for all of them to be so busy. Other than a few amputations, there was hardly any major surgery to be done at the time. But, there were endless infected wounds to be debrided and cleaned. Thousands of patients had running sores with underlying infection in their bones. Others had partially healed traumatic amputations of their limbs. The lines at the small clinic were endless, and at the end of the day, it seemed as if they had accomplished nothing. The lines of sick people never grew shorter. The burden of work never diminished. Always, there were still more patients to see, more human beings in need of help. There was no way any of them could look into the eyes of the next person in line and say, “Sorry, we’re closed until morning.” For that person, morning might never come.

  At night, they would roll into their cots and fall immediately to sleep, only to be awakened an hour or two later by the orderlies to resume their duties. The lines were just too long, and the need was too desperate to keep a single patient waiting.

  While the medical personnel worked through the night, engineers set up latrines to divert waste materials away from the drinking water supplies. Identification teams were set up to catalog the long list of the dead as well as the living. Although it seemed counter-intuitive, it was terribly important to learn the identities of the dead, for the living could ultimately insert themselves back into the lives of their families and friends. They knew who they were. But nobody wanted to allow the dead to disappear into the earth unrecognized, unremembered, leaving their families to search for them forever.

  The job was impossible. Yet, it would be done. They would do it.

  Gwerski, now wearing real sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve worked with his men to round up teams of civilians from the surrounding villages and assemble his own forced-labor battalion to sort and bury the dead.

  To everyone’s surprise, out of nowhere, Marsh turned up, working with a vengeance, embarrassing everyone around him with his energy. Hamm and Schneider knew Marsh’s wounds still bothered him for they could see him grimace many times during the day as he straightened up and stretched his back to relieve the pain and the stiffness.

  Antonelli didn’t show up, and Marsh said he had no idea where he was, as they had gone different directions weeks ago.

  Armed with shovels and wagons, and under the angry eyes of armed GIs, the reluctant German work force carried the foul, rotting bodies of the naked victims, laying them out in orderly lines in front of graves dug with military precision. It wasn’t heavy work, for most of the bodies weighed less than eighty pounds and some considerably less.

  The bodies were cleansed with precious clean water and soap, carefully wrapped in sheets, and lowered one by one into their resting places. Final prayers were offered by the military chaplains. Gwerski oversaw the dignity of the proceedings as if these were all members of his own family. He also oversaw the markers. Crosses and Stars of David were individually carved and set in place at the head of each grave. The graves were numbered, and careful records kept wherever possible. Some of the bodies still had readable numbers tattooed on their forearms, which were also recorded. The Germans had been meticulous record keepers. For the vast majority, however, there would be no name, no number. Only anonymous remembrance.

  Then, one day, the medical team received the best present they could ask for. Amid the never-ending horror, the only time Hamm smiled in those weeks was that Sunday morning two weeks after they had arrived.

  He was just dragging himself out of his tent, feeling the same dread that greeted him every day. He had just awakened from some escapist dream of normalcy, to find himself in hell again, when a beat-up ambulance rolled into the compound. The vehicle was so covered with mud that the red crosses were barely visible and the canvas cover was little more than a rag. But it was one of their ambulances and that meant more supplies and perhaps more personnel.

  Hamm made himself the unofficial greeter of all newcomers, so he detoured and headed over to meet the new arrivals. He got there just as the rear flaps flew open, and a bunch of nurses and medics jumped to the ground. They looked as grim and depressed as he had been feeling since he arrived at the camp. He later found out that they had been doing the very same work further inside Germany. They had come from a place called Dachau near Munich. Hamm hadn’t heard of it, but from the looks on their faces, it was no better than his own hell, maybe worse.

  He was looking over the supplies stacked in the rear after everybody was off the truck, hoping for some boxes of clean bandages. They were going through gauze pads at an impossible pace. The passenger side door of the cab opened, and another nurse hopped down into the mud. He turned and put out his hand (saluting was truly a thing of the past by then) and nearly fell over with delight.

  “Hey, Hamm,” Molly said, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him an almost painfully tight hug. And then she was crying into his neck. Her tears wet the collar of his scrub suit. He shrugged his shoulders and waved his hands all around him, mutely indicating the surrounding horrors. And in a moment, he was crying, too.

  He pulled her gently away, holding her by the shoulders at arm’s length. She smiled at him with the tears still wet on her cheeks.

  “My God, Molly, you look wonderful.” He was lying. She looked terrible. She had lost too much weight and had dark bags under her eyes. Her once milky Celtic skin now sallow and wan.

  “Liar,” she said quietly. “I know just how I look.” Then she hesitated, looked around and asked, “Steve here?”

  Hamm just nodded, motioning with his head. “He’s over in that tent, the one with the flaps tied open. Go ahead and wake him. It’s time to get him up anyway.”

  Not that he could have stopped her. She turned before he was finished speaking and ran to find Steve.

/>   Hamm’s heart ached to see her, for he knew too well that she and Steve were in for a great deal more pain.

  Hamm walked back toward the tent trailing slowly in Molly’s wake. He didn’t want to interrupt them, but he also needed desperately to get out of his filthy scrubs he’d been sleeping in. Besides, the truth was he really did want to see their reunion.

  Molly bombed into the tent without hesitating just as Steve was getting up from his bed. She slammed into him and knocked him back onto the cot, nearly rolling off the other side. Then she was crying, and laughing, and hugging Steve almost before he could figure out what had happened. In another minute, they were locked in the longest, deepest kiss Hamm had seen in a very long while. After which it was time for Hamm to turn around and leave them alone. His clean scrubs would just have to wait.

  The next day, Hamm sat at the edge of his cot, rubbing his red eyes. Schneider stirred and tried to force himself awake. He swung his legs over the edge of his cot and stepped automatically into his boots. He made a foul face and then sniffed at his own clothes, now soiled and stained with an unnamed oily residue.

  “I think it’s time to burn these,” Schneider said, pointing at his clothes, “and get some new ones. It’s getting hard to tell us from the inmates anymore.”

  Hamm nodded and struggled to make a small smile. But he was just too tired. In the long months of battle, he had never felt so defeated, so depressed. Never could he have dreamed of such cruelty, such depravity. For the first time in his life, he felt the urge to kill. He reveled in dreams of revenge against those who had perpetrated such atrocities against these poor helpless souls.

  It was only with the greatest effort that Hamm could focus on treating one person at a time. Only by seeing each person as a special individual could he stay with what he was doing. Each time he allowed himself to glance up at the lines forming at the clinic door, or the bodies endlessly shuttled to the graveside, his heart sank, weighted with the futility of it all. He wanted to get up and walk home.

  “I have to pretend every minute that this is my private practice, Steve,” Hamm told Schneider one day. “I pretend that each one has a family out in my waiting room, watching the clock and hoping I’ll come through the door with good news, just like at home. If I don’t do that every time, with every patient, they just become numbers. Something less than humans. The Nazi’s ‘Untermenschen.’ These poor people—our people—they all need us. And there’s not enough of us to go around.”

  Schneider nodded. He admitted that he was struggling with the same thing. “You know,” he added, “these really are my people. These are the ones I ran away from. They’re mostly Jewish, and they’re German. Back home I didn’t want any part of them. They embarrassed me. Now I can’t see leaving here until the job is done. The battlefield was one thing. I kept telling myself that as soon as the last gunshots were fired, I’m out of here. No more Army. No more of any of this bullshit. But I can’t leave, Hamm. Not yet. I mean, I don’t know when we’re going to get orders sending us home, but I’m not ready to go. Not yet.”

  “I know.” Hamm waited for Schneider to continue, and when he did not, Hamm said, “I think I will go home when they send me. I know they need us here, but there’s going to be thousands of GIs going home who need more surgery. Colostomies to close. Amputations to revise. Chest fistulas that don’t heal. There’s going to be floods of surgery for us back there. I may just postpone rejoining my practice. Maybe go with the veterans’ hospitals for a while. These are the guys who fought with us all these months, Steve. They died for us. There’s so many like them who need my help. I’m going to put in for extended duty. For them. I guess, for Dick really.”

  Hamm saw a sadness in Steve’s eyes, but he said nothing. He realized Steve was thinking of Molly. Before he could say anything, Steve said, “I have to make some decisions, Hamm. About Molly. I still don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Hamm wondered if Steve would find the courage to go back to his family, his life. It seemed easier to stay there under the pretext of finishing the job than to go back to repair his damaged marriage; harder to put Molly in the past. He didn’t envy him. Steve and Molly had survived the ordeal in the minefield, but Hamm didn’t know how they would survive the end of the war.

  “Steve, listen to me. You know what I think of Molly. And you know I’m your friend. So would you just hear me out?”

  Steve looked at Hamm with a wariness that said he didn’t want to hear what Hamm was going to say. But Hamm persisted before Steve could interrupt. He was risking his friendship, but he had to say it.

  “This isn’t the real world, pal. This is a war, and nobody at home is going to understand the smallest particle of what we saw here. What we did here. What the Krauts did here. Mark my words, when we get home, all anybody will care about is that we’re back safely, and they’re not going to want to hear the details. And I am not going to want to tell them about this. I’m going to take off these God-awful clothes and get back into my civvies and back to my life. Even if it’s in a veteran’s hospital, it’ll be different back home. I’m telling you, Steve, it’s going to be another world. They don’t really want to hear about this.”

  Schneider stared out the tent door for a moment and asked, “What does that have to do with me and Molly? That’s really what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. The war stuff is one thing, but not much different. You two guys fell in love out here like a scene from a movie. You were having trouble at home with Susan for a couple of years, and then you’re alone in England, happier there alone than at home with Susan. Molly’s lost her husband to the Japs at Pearl, so she’s devastated and lonely. Mix that all together with the fear that neither of you might live long enough to go home. I mean that minefield, for Christ’s sake. If that wasn’t a nightmare, I don’t know what is. So you guys fall in love and had…I don’t know.” Hamm struggled to find the words without getting too graphic. “Paris for one thing. It was a fairy tale. And fairy tales aren’t real. They all end.”

  “So, you’re saying we’re not really in love? This is just all make-believe? We’re not going to live happily ever after?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m not sure what I’m saying. And I’m sure I don’t have the answers. Jesus, Steve. We all love Molly. Not the way you do, but I couldn’t love her more if she were my sister. But you made some vows a few years ago, and there’s a family back there that has been counting the days for years. They have dreaded every knock on their door. They think, when the war is over, you’re coming home to them. Susan hasn’t a clue that anything else is going to happen but that you will come home and resume your life with her, however tough it might be. She deserves a chance to put it back together.”

  Steve had been sitting on the edge of his cot with his elbows on his knees. Now he buried his face in his hands. Hamm didn’t know if he was crying or not, for he made no sounds. Steve shook his head back and forth in a way that was both so pathetic and defeated that Hamm could barely bring himself to look at him. It felt as if he had now intruded too far into his best friend’s life.

  In his embarrassment, Hamm started to rummage through his duffel for something resembling a clean outfit when Gwerski walked through the door.

  “You guys heard the news?”

  Steve quickly wiped his face. He looked at Hamm and then said to Gwerski, “What news?”

  “Bürgermeister Kimmel. The Mayor.”

  “Ooh, I like your German accent, Gwerski,” Schneider said. “Keep it up.”

  Gwerski frowned, and then went on. “Hanged himself last night from the rafters in his office. I guess he couldn’t take looking at all the bodies. I had him on burial detail the last couple of days.” He looked down at his feet, oddly saddened by what had happened. As if it were somehow his fault for forcing the man into burying the dead.

  “You know what?” Schneider said. “I couldn’t give a shit about him or any of the rest of them. They all knew
what was going on here. Every last one of them. You could smell the burning bodies for miles around, for Christ’s sake. Still can. They could see the smoke. The ashes must have fallen on their houses. Jesus! Listen, Sergeant, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. The creep deserved it.”

  Gwerski looked directly at Schneider. “What could he have done even if he did know, Major? I mean, the Krauts, the Nazis, the SS ran the show. It wouldn’t have mattered what he knew or didn’t know. He couldn’t have done nothin’ about it. Any of them. What’s one man gonna do?” Hamm stood up, putting on some reasonably clean pants. “Look, it just doesn’t matter right now. Nothing matters now but getting the dead people identified, and buried, and out of the way. And we’ve got to try to keep the rest of them alive. These German civilians are a work force. Nothing more. They bury the dead, and that leaves more of us to take care of the living ones. Nothing more, Sergeant. It isn’t your responsibility. Just do as you’re ordered.”

  Gwerski looked at Hamm and Schneider and started to leave. There was a terrible look on his face. As he passed through the door, he muttered, “Yeah, yeah. That’s what the Krauts keep saying: ‘Just following orders.’”

  Chapter Thirty

  25 May 1945, 2100 Hours

  A Concentration Camp near Weimar, Germany

  Schneider stared into Berg’s eyes again as he had been doing for countless days. Every morning before going to the clinic, and every evening before sacking out for the night, he sat with his uncle in the older doctor’s office. They had moved Berg’s cot permanently into the office, hoping that the familiar surroundings would help ease him back into the real world. Since their reunion, Berg had lapsed back into a near catatonic state. He spent most of his time staring into the far distance, devoid of focus and emotion. He hadn’t spoken since he said Schneider’s name on the very first day.